Day: November 23, 2010

How did the mugger botch the robbery of a Staten Island pizza man? He grabbed the wrong bag of dough, of course…

Salvatore LaRosa and an unidentified accomplice allegedly followed the owners of Brother’s Pizzeria home on June 30, 2008. They put on masks and confronted the victims at gunpoint in their driveway, according to a complaint unsealed Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Even though it wasn’t cash, the robbery victim resisted and was shot twice in the legs.

This creep managed a get-out-of-jail card by fronting a $1 million bail order from the Federal Court. Poisonally, I think they should lock him up and throw away the key. He shot the poor bugger he robbed.

A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 2008 in the rural parish where he worked west of San Antonio was rearrested last week in Dallas and charged with trying to hire someone to kill his accuser.

Father John M. Fiala, 52, was in Dallas County Jail on one count of solicitation to commit murder and two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, officials said. A judge set bail at $700,000.

The sexual assault charges were part of indictments handed up last week in Howard County, which brought to six the number of such charges Fiala faces that involve the boy, who was 16 at the time of the alleged offenses.

The Texas Rangers and Department of Public Safety troopers arrested Fiala on Thursday after he negotiated a murder arrangement with an undercover officer at his residence in Garland, DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said. Fiala sought to have his accuser in the sexual assault cases killed, Vinger said in an e-mailed statement…

In September, the priest was indicted on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of aggravated sexual assault by threat in Edwards County, where Fiala is accused of raping the teen at gunpoint, according to the charges and the lawsuit.

Nice guy. Not much need to address the phenomenon of pedophile priests once again. A sickness representative of what can result from a lifetime of dedication to an unnatural lifestyle.

A man who has been representing Taliban senior leadership in secret talks with the Afghan government appears to have been an impostor.

The man, calling himself Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the Taliban’s second-ranking official, was exposed after another man who knows Mansour did not recognise him during a negotiation session…

The secret talks with the impostor had been going on for months and were used by senior US officials to claim progress on the diplomatic front in the Afghan war.

NATO and Afghan officials told the New York Times they held three meetings with the man, who allegedly received large sums of money to take part in the negotiations.

The fake Taliban leader, who travelled from across the border in Pakistan, even met with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, in the presidential palace in Kabul, the capital. He was flown to the capital on NATO aircraft…

“Americans here admit that they don’t often know what these people look like; that they can only go on who they say they are because these people have been hiding and fighting this insurgency for so long,” she said.

“So they have to go on trust to a certain extent, and it seems that this particular man has managed to get away with it.”

The social harm of polygamy should outweigh any fear that enforcing the laws against it will violate protections of religious freedom, Canadian prosecutors said on Monday at the start of a judicial inquiry.

The Canadian province had long refused to file charges against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints saying it feared the 19th century law ran afoul of more recent civil rights protections.

But provincial prosecutors told the hearing they have changed their minds, and now want the law declared constitutional so they can enforce it. Their past views had hampered their recent efforts to file criminal charges…

The FLDS, which split from the mainstream Mormon church over the issue of polygamy, has an estimated 10,000 followers in Utah, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia.

The church says it is exercising religious freedom. There’s another chunk of law to consider beyond this case. After all, many global religions, most notably Islam permit polygamy. Some allow polyandry.

And if the religious question is settled to allow polygamy, how can the stae justify special treatment for a religion – and disallow the right for the secular and sensible?

The woman who told President Barack Obama that she was “exhausted” from defending him and his economic policies and waiting for the change she expected after voting for him has another reason to be put out: She’s lost her job.

Velma Hart, the chief financial officer for AmVets, a veteran services organization based in Maryland, said Monday in an interview with CNBC that she was laid off as part of the nonprofit’s effort to cut expenses.

“I want to focus on the positive and be optimistic,” said Hart, who lives in Upper Marlboro, Md. “And assume that somehow things will work out, that there’s an opportunity out there with Velma’s name on it that’s right around the corner.”

Am Vets executive director Jim King told The Washington Post that the nonprofit was looking for ways to survive financially.

“It’s not anything she did,” King told the Post for a story that appeared online Monday. “She got bit by the same snake that has bit a lot of people. It was a move to cut our bottom line…”

Hart told CNBC that she still supports Obama and noted that the economy is improving, though she finds the prospect of unemployment “scary.”

I watched her on TV, this morning. She’s well aware from the work that AmVets does that it’s no longer unusual for someone to be out of work during this Great Recession for a couple of years.

Fortunately, she’s well-enough qualified that I hope she’ll be able to find a new job – or things will turn around enough for AmVets to bring her back.

Rupert Murdoch, head honcho of the News Corp. and Fox News, is investing $30 million and a staff of about 100 to create and run The Daily, the first newspaper available only on the iPad and other tablet devices, scheduled to roll out early next year…

The New York Times media columnist David Carr explored the prospect: The Daily will still retain some of the more archaic aspects of a print newspaper in that it will be produced into the evening and “printed” in the morning. Updates will come, but not like we’re used to with news websites now.

For the most part, it will produce original content, although Fox Sports will provide some video. Murdoch is bringing some heavy hitters into the new project: The New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, ABC News TV producer Steve Alperin and Page Six’s Richard Johnson.

While millions of readers were lost when News Corp. moved The Times of London and The Sunday Times behind a pay wall in July, the Daily can start with a clean slate having never been free. It will have an “easy payment” format…

John Koblin at Women’s Wear Daily reported more details: The Daily will be in beta mode before the new year, around Christmas, and will cost 99 cents for a 7-day week subscription, or $4.25/month. WWD also reports that the newspaper will go beyond the iPad to other tablet devices beginning in 2011, so they won’t be missing those growing number of Android consumers…

Sounds like Rupert has actually been paying attention to Steve Jobs. His primo criticism of all the business models attempted for print media spin-offs has been what newspaper types think they can sharge for unlimited access to their product.

Maybe Murdoch has it right? Unless he screws up content like his TV Faux News.

The latest rumor, btw, has a debut press event sked for 9 December – headlining both Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch. Will Rupert wear a black mock turtleneck? Sure as hell Jobs ain’t wearing a suit and tie.

US government drivers trusted with transporting nuclear weapons are sometimes getting drunk while on duty, a Department of Energy investigation showed Monday.

The drivers were involved in 16 alcohol-related incidents from 2007 to 2009, with one agent arrested by police three years ago and two others handcuffed and detained last year, the Energy Department’s office of inspector general said.

The Office of Secure Transportation (OST) oversees the shipment of nuclear weapons, weapon parts and special nuclear material, with a workforce of nearly 600 agents.

“Alcohol incidents such as these, as infrequent as they may be, indicate a potential vulnerability in OST’s critical national security mission,” the report said…

Two of the 16 alcohol incidents took place when convoy trucks were in “safe harbor” status and the agents had checked into local hotels…

Under new rules designed by the government agency, agents are barred from drinking alcohol eight hours before reporting for duty and agent candidates are prohibited from “possessing kegs of beer or quantities of alcohol in excess of what is reasonable for personal use,” said the report.

I’d concur – that taking a keg along while transporting nuclear weapons might help with the jitters – I doubt if it would contribute anything positive to driving performance.

Still my favorite sign from the Women's March against our fake president